This post has been submitted by Webcomics.com member Joel Bartlett, creator of Three Feet Under.

My name is Joel Bartlett, and I’ve been doing my comic 3 Feet Under for just about 9 months now. Here’s a quick peek at my studio and creative process! My lady-partner and I just bought a house and I’ve had the fortunate pleasure to set up my new studio in our 2nd bedroom.

First off is my drafting table where I draw everything in pencil, on bristol board first. The drafting table is actually and hand-me-down from my old teachers Adam Wither and Comfort Love when they moved many years back. The chair I use is, oddly enough, a make-up chair I found at a moving sale earlier this year. It’s got an adjustable seat height and foot rest built in. To the left of the table I keep my supplies. I keep everything in separate drawings, one for pencils, pens, and bottom drawer for misc. items. The carrier on top I use to house my copic markers and extra stuff for convention sketches.

After finishing penciling the strip I scan them in and store them in the pull out drawers below, which is also where I keep my prints for conventions. From there I’ll assemble both halves into my panel template in Photoshop CS4. Then I’ll open up the file in manga studio to ink and color it I use MS to color the strip for the speed of it but for full illustrations and prints I will use PS. After inking and coloring I’ll bring the strip back into PS to lay in the text, then back into MS for the balloons. After finishing the strip I’ll bring it into PS for the final time to resize it for the web and create the promo images for social media.

My process for creating each strip is kind of unruly I feel so I’ve been trying to think of new ways to streamline the process. I always like playing around and trying out different ways to tweak the way I work.  Thanks for taking a look!

-Joel